A Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving for me is usually spent at my parents’ house in Michigan with a warm fire and sumptuous dinner that consists of a mixture of Indian and American dishes. This year, I decided to stay in New York City to skip the strenuous holiday travel after exhaustion from my recent apartment move and an anticipated trip oversees coming up in December.

Yesterday, I took a walk in the brisk morning to go to the Macy’s parade. I was hoping to catch a bus, but the sun was shining and the beauty and quietness of it all made me skip taking the bus. It was a little eerie to see New York City so quiet, when the excitement and madness makes way to calmness. However, it wasn’t long before I could hear people at distance and I knew that I was getting close to the parade. Then, I saw people with strollers, grandmothers, couples, tourists, and locals eagerly walking in that direction.

As I continued walking, I saw a person crouched up on the side of the street with a few bags wearing a hooded old sweater. As many of you know, it is not an uncommon sight in the city to see a homeless person, and I don’t always stop. This time, something in me made me stop and go back. I couldn’t tell if the person was a man or woman since all I could see was a small part of the face; I felt I had to give something. The person looked up surprised as if awoken from a deep sleep, and it made me a bit sad.

At the parade, I saw the floats of Ronald McDonald, Snoopy, and Spiderman; people were screaming and laughing, little kids were perched up on their father’s shoulders, and tourists were looking at the floats in awe taking pictures of everything in sight (probably their first American Thanksgiving). My festive mood was tampered with the thought of the crouched up person in the street. It was a reminder to me that there are people who spend their Thanksgiving without a home, a family, or a smiling child next to them. It was a reminder to me to be thankful for my family, friends, and my home.

Urban Grit - Lower East Side

Many neighborhoods in Manhattan have lost their inherent character in the past 10-20 years due to gentrification. However, in the Lower East Side, you can still see the grit of New York City on an aging wall, a broken door, or an occasional dumpster.

Waste of Time

Some of you who have read my blog before have probably realized that spring is my favorite season. In-spite of the temperamental rain and irritating allergies, there is something rejuvenating about spring that sets it apart from other seasons. I am back and ready to blog again after an absence of four months. My absence from this blog also made me realize how everything is ephemeral.

I decided to calculate the amount of time certain individuals (who shall remain unnamed) spend on Facebook and other social networking sites. The figures are alarming and a bit sad. I thought about my life and other people’s lives wasted away, the time squandered into the depths of networks and binary numbers unable to ever be recovered; the lost time sucked by a wormhole and never to be seen again.

Deeply regretful of all the time that I and others have wasted, I thought for a moment about what to do about it. Is social media addictive? Of course it is. What is that makes it so alluring? I realized that it is the basic human tendencies and extreme emotions that make social media the most alluring: the connections, popularity, narcissism, pomposity, curiosity, insecurity, and depression. These extreme emotions somehow make their way into people’s use of these social media tools. It is usually the most social and narcissistic or the least social and insecure who is likely to be online most of the time.

I had two cups of premium Italian coffee today and with caffeine still pulsing in my system, I couldn’t help but calculate the hours spent on social media networks. Say you are an addict, and my definition of an addict is someone who spends more than 2 hours a day on a social media website: this includes sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace , LinkedIn (yes, it needs to be included too), and Friendster (if you are one of those people who still use it), 2 hours multiplied by 365 days a year is 730 hours a year.

730 hours is enough for someone to write a novel length manuscript, learn a brand new foreign language, pick up a new musical instrument, travel to a few exotic countries, volunteer at a few shelters, meet a few new people, or read a few books.

After calculating the lost time, the hours seemed to go through the wormhole along with other faces and expressions, each social media website logo devoured by it, into an abyss.